Thankfully, she moves on.
“Tell me about your day-to-day, Landry. I think today, seeing your ranch and learning more about you is a great place to start.” She roots around in her messenger bag and pulls out a notebook, the wordsTHE COMEBACK RIDERscrawled over the front. I nod toward it as she pulls a pink pen from her bag. “That the name of it? The movie?”
She looks at the notebook then up at me, those green eyes of hers smiling pridefully. “Yeah. I came up with it.”
I run my hand down my thigh, remembering last night as I glance back at the barn. After I got Sadie to bed, I snuck out to the barn and dragged the cover off the mechanical bucker, and hopped on.
Foolish.
That’s what it was.
I wanted to see if I could even sit up on anything and feel something. Excitement, happiness, nerves, anything at all. It’s been so long since I’ve broken in a bronc or climbed on for a go. I climbed on there and held tight, and looking at my palms today, you’d think I’ve been training for weeks already.
But I sat there, gripping the rig, stationary. Damn thing wasn’t even plugged in. Still. I sat there, gripping until myhand went numb, staring out into the stalls at the horses, and then up at the night sky full of glittering stars. If someone would’ve told me the love of my life would be gone and that I’d be in a barn alone at night dreaming of the past while my baby girl sleeps upstairs, I’d have told ’em off.
Though it’s been six years, I don’t think I’ll ever stop mourning the life we all lost, together.
Quinn peers down at my hand, tapping the sore spot with the end of her pen. “Ouch. What happened there?”
“Ranch life,” I grouse, suddenly frustrated by the rush of emotions I find myself catching. Nostalgia is a more dangerous drug than any, I think. I peer over at her, watching her scribble in bubbly cursive. “You come up with theBeautiful Minds of the Bronx, too, then?”
She stops writing, blinking up at me with those mossy green eyes that have to be as beautiful as a clear Texas day. Maybe even more. I lick my lips, the back of my neck hot as awareness shudders through me in violent waves.
I’m looking at Quinn Farley the same way I looked at Amelia, all those years back.
“You… looked me up?”
I nod. “I looked up UBS.” Her face falls a little, but she plasters on a smile so quickly, it’s hard to get a sense of how she’s really feeling, or what she’s thinking. Is she disappointed I looked up her film company, or disappointed I didn’t look her up directly?
“Oh.” Another white-toothed smile. “I’ve only done three films so far, but if you’re nervous that I’m not experienced enough?—”
“No,” I grumble, “I’m not… You’re here. I don’t want another person having to dig into my life. You’re here. You’re making the film.”
She blinks at me. I feel her stare along my profile, despitethe fact that I watch the horses run for another minute. “You know, everyone who watches the film is gonna learn a lot about you.” Her hand comes down on my thigh, and my eyes drop to her touch immediately. She pulls it away, cheeks flaming with insecurity. I’m not sure that touch was inappropriate, but it felt like it. If Mabel put her hand on my thigh, I’d probably put my hand over hers and give it a nice, platonic pat. “Just… want you to be comfortable with that, is all.”
I’m not. I don’t like it. I don’t like it for me, and I don’t much care for it for Sadie, either. But when UBS sent me an email, then sent one to Tatum, my second-in-charge here at the ranch, he forced me to read it. “A great way to bring attention to your return to the arena,” is the way that it was pitched, and as much as I hated every single one of those words, I saw an opportunity.
Not for me, but for my girl.
Writing an email back asking to be compensated for my participation was terrible. I hated every single keystroke. The shame that burned through my body as I sat at that stupid desk chair and wrote the words,Happy to participate in the film in exchange for a small stipend,is indescribable.
I don’t want charity.
I don’t want Elena to help me free of charge, or promise to add things to my bill then forget. I don’t want Tatum to work a second job because I can’t pay him. I don’t want my girl to grow up in a house that needs more work than not because her daddy can’t afford to make it pretty for her.
And I don’t want to get back on a bronc, not in the arena, not in front of Sadie, not in front of anyone, ever.
But I’m a parent, and what I want is meaningless compared to what sheneeds, what’s best for her. She’s already only living a fraction of the life we envisioned for her withouther mama here, I won’t take her stability from beneath her, too.
I’ll compete, and I’ll win, and I’ll get paid for this young thing to be in my business for a few months, and when it’s all said and done, she’ll go her way and I’ll go mine. I’ll save this land that’s been in my family for four generations and I’ll save this home, too. The only home my baby has ever known.
I take Quinn Farley and her pink boots through every acre of my property, showing her the wishing well, introducing her to the horses in the stable, and even taking her to the barn to show her where I work out, and the bucking machine. She takes notes the entire time.
An hour and a half later, we’re headed back to the house, Sadie outside with Petunia Collier, the two of them attempting to fly a kite shaped like a butterfly. “Careful by that end of the porch now, you two,” Love Collier hollers from her spot on the lawn, resting on a quilt with their baby in her lap.
The porch isn’t safe on that side of the house anymore, what with dry rot and years of neglect. While Sadie takes Quinn by the hand to her room to show her all of her horse stuffed animals, I park the four-wheeler and close the barn. The sun licking at the side of my jaw, my attention is yanked to the second-floor window, where I see Quinn wearing Sadie’s hat, Sadie’s hand over her mouth to capture her uproarious laughter.
The side of my mouth lifts for a minute, then drops. And I head inside.
